Food Supply, Starvation, and Food As a Weapon in the Camps and Ghettos of Romanian-Occupied Bessarabia and Transnistria, 1941-44
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Food Supply, Starvation, and Food As a Weapon in the Camps and Ghettos of Romanian-Occupied Bessarabia and Transnistria, 1941-44 Paul A. Shapiro United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Abstract: The Romanian regime of wartime leader Ion Antonescu concentrated the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovyna in transit camps and ghettos, and then deported them to the Romanian-administered territory between the Dnister and Buh rivers, in southwestern Ukraine. Of approximately 160,000 Romanian Jews deported to “Transnistria,” only 50,000 survived the ordeal. The Romanians, with local Volksdeutsch and Ukrainian collaborators, also massacred and were otherwise responsible for the death of approximately 150,000 local Ukrainian Jews, including the large Jewish community of Odesa. While not comparable to the Jews in number, deported Romanian Roma and local Roma were also subjected to physical brutality, forced labour, and incarceration. Famine and starvation did not cause all Jewish and Roma deaths in Bessarabia and Transnistria. Mass executions exacted a huge toll. So did exposure to the elements, exhaustion, and typhus. Still, while there was no famine in the region, starvation was a permanent presence. Romanian authorities controlled the food supply and denied it to their targeted victims. This article describes the steps taken by Romanian occupation authorities to isolate Jews and Roma; to limit the flow of food supplies to them; to prevent them from accessing food in local markets; and to prevent help that might have been offered by those local civilians who took pity on the starving victims. Official documentation and testimonies of both officials and survivors provide a vivid picture of the consequences. Specific cases reveal factors that made the situation in one locality better or worse than that in another, or that caused a situation to improve or deteriorate. Variations notwithstanding, however, all sources lead to the conclusion that Romania’s goal was to eliminate the Jews and reduce the Roma population. This made starvation, the use of “food as a weapon,” an acceptable element of state policy. Keywords: Bessarabia, Transnistria, Romania, Holocaust, Roma, starvation. amine and starvation: does this phrase describe the situation that F prevailed in Bessarabia after Romania regained control of the province in mid-1941, following a year of Soviet occupation? Does it adequately describe the realities of the situation in Transnistria, the territory stretching from the Dnister to the Buh rivers that Romania occupied during World War II? Do famine and starvation explain the deaths of between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews and nearly half of the 25,000 Roma from Romania who were © 2021 East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (ewjus.com) ISSN 2292-7956 Volume VIII, No. 1 (2021) DOI: https://doi.org/10.21226/ewjus638 44 Paul A. Shapiro deported eastward by the Antonescu regime, or who, as local inhabitants of Transnistria, found themselves in the hands of Romanian authorities between 1941 and 1944? The answers to these questions clearly must be “no,” or at least “it is not that simple.” There was no famine in either Bessarabia or Transnistria. Indeed, as the Romanians were shipping immense quantities of foodstuff out of Romania to their Axis ally, Germany, they were simultaneously requisitioning agricultural products from Transnistrian farms and transporting food from Transnistria into Romania proper.1 Romanian occupation authorities maintained the collective farm system that had been installed by the Soviets, and they levied food delivery requirements, just as the Soviets had, to supply themselves and contribute to the food supply available at home. Romanian policy toward the Jews of Bessarabia and Transnistria was intentionally demeaning, brutal, and lethal. Control of the food supply and systematic starvation, however, were hardly the only murderous techniques that the Romanians deployed to achieve their policy goals regarding Jews, which had been enunciated clearly by wartime dictator and military leader “Conducător” Ion Antonescu and his Vice President of the Council of Ministers Mihai Antonescu. The policy they laid down was carried out without hesitation by their principal accomplices in the territories addressed here—the governor of Bessarabia Constantin Voiculescu, Transnistria governor Gheorghe Alexianu, and General Constantin Z. (“Piki”) Vasiliu, Director General of the Gendarmerie in the Romanian Ministry of Interior. Ion Antonescu, in establishing “cleansing the terrain” of Jews (“curăţirea terenului”) as national policy, declared on 4 July 1941, as Romanian forces entered Bessarabia, “The Jews have drained, impoverished, speculated against and prevented the development of the Romanian nation for centuries. There can be no debate regarding the need to escape from this 1 For an early study of the roots and magnitude of Romanian economic obligations to Germany, including food shipments, see Niri. Romania’s systematic pillage and removal of Transnistrian economic resources, ranging from industrial facilities and transportation infrastructure to cultural assets and food, is explored in detail, on the basis of documentation that became accessible following the collapse of Communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, in Solonari. The exploitation of food requisitioned from Transnistrian collective farms is addressed in Verenca and in various reports issued by the Antonescu government during the war. Germany’s disappointment that these surpluses were not fully available for German use is noted in Axworthy 137. The most authoritative monographic source on Romanian-German relations during the war is Traşcă, Relaţiile Politice. © 2021 East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (ewjus.com) ISSN 2292-7956 Volume VIII, No. 1 (2021) Food Supply, Starvation, and Food As a Weapon 45 plague against Romanianism . .”2 Four days later, Mihai Antonescu, at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, which he chaired during the Conducător’s frequent absences at the front, summarized Ion Antonescu’s intentions in an even more menacing tone: At the risk of not being understood by any traditionalists who may remain among you, I am for the forced migration of the entire Jewish element from Bessarabia and Bukovina . I am indifferent if in history we are deemed to be barbarians . There has been no more favourable, more unfettered, more propitious or more unconstrained moment in our history for a total ethnic resolution . and for the purification of our nation . If necessary, use machine guns.3 Tens of thousands of Jews in Bessarabia and in Transnistria were simply shot on the spot during the advance across Bessarabia and southwestern Ukraine of Romanian military forces and the Einsatzgruppen-like “operational [killing] units” (“eşaloane operative”) that had been created by Romanian authorities. Jews were murdered on the streets of Chişinău during a week of wild killing before the creation of the ghetto there, and then in massacres of able-bodied Jews from that ghetto, which were designed to reduce the potential for resistance on the eve of approaching deportations. The killing continued during the forced marches of columns of Jews from Bessarabia to Transnistria, and from location to location in Transnistria, where the standing order was to execute any Jew—man, woman, or child— who fell behind the column. On the streets of Odesa and at Dalnic on the outskirts of the city, Jews seeking to escape the warehouses that the Romanians had set ablaze, with some 16,000 Jews inside, were met with machine-gun fire. In the Berezivka (Berezovca) district, Volksdeutsch colonists eagerly participated in executing Jews being evacuated north from Odesa. In Holta (Golta) district, over several weeks in December 1941- January 1942, between 48,000 and 52,000 Jews were shot to death at Bohdanivka (Bogdanovca), Domanivka (Domanovca), and Akmechetski Stavky (Acmecetca). At Bohdanivka, as at Dalnic, Jews were burned alive. One of the pigsties where they were being held was set on fire by the Romanians, as a means of “encouraging” other Jews interned on that collective farm to proceed more willingly to the shooting site. Jews were hanged from lampposts on the streets of Odesa in retribution for the dynamiting of the military headquarters building, which in reality had been mined by withdrawing 2 Order of 4 July 1941, Ion Antonescu to military and gendarmerie units, in Evreii din România între Anii 1940-1944: Perioada 1: 256-57. All translations are my own. 3 The minutes of the meeting can be found in Evreii din România între Anii 1940- 1944—Problema 264-68; also excerpted in Carp 3: 92. © 2021 East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (ewjus.com) ISSN 2292-7956 Volume VIII, No. 1 (2021) 46 Paul A. Shapiro Soviet forces, not by Odesan Jews.4 And many Jews quite simply were left exposed to the weather with neither shelter nor heat and froze to death in ghettos and camps across Transnistria, especially during the brutally cold winter of 1941-42. Roma deportees who arrived later were also deprived of adequate shelter and succumbed in significant numbers to cold, disease, and exhaustion.5 Yet even within this litany of murder techniques, the impact of the food factor manifested itself at all stages of the persecution and destruction process. Hunger and starvation became a daily reality because of the rules established by the regime, according to which Jews and Roma in most cases were supposed to provide for their own food needs through work. The disproportionately large number of elderly, women, and children relative to able-bodied workers among the victims and the severe restrictions placed on their freedom to go in search of either work or food made this a virtual impossibility. The refusal of potential employers, as well as many actual users of forced labour, to pay or feed Jewish and Romani labourers further aggravated the tragic situation confronting the persecutees. The authorities controlled food supplies, and the needs of everyone else, both locally and in Romania proper, took priority over the needs of Jews and Roma. Both Jews and Roma found themselves in a constant state of panic regarding food.